Whether it’s the leftovers after a typical Middle Eastern feast or the produce that’s discarded in the kitchen during meal preparations, food waste is major global issue with 1.3 billion tonnes of food lost annually.
Regionally, food wastage is costing the UAE $3.5 billion (AED13 billion) per year, according to the country’s Ministry of Climate Change and Environment.
Because food is the largest expense for a catering or F&B operation, food waste is negatively impacting those businesses’ bottom line, explained Rachid Noujeim, CEO Middle East, Sodexo International, a catering and facilities management company. Statistics have shown that almost 50 percent of food waste can be salvaged or avoided, said Noujeim.
“In the food industry, the biggest check is your food cost which on average represents 30 to 35 percent of your total cost. If you can save 3 percent of your total cost through reducing food waste by 50 percent, then that is already huge,” said Noujeim.
“This is especially significant for us in the catering business because we have very tight margins and operate on shaving pennies off our costs,” he added.
When food is wasted and ends up in landfills, it contributes to 8 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions as it rots. This makes sustainability another important reason to reduce food waste, explained Noujeim.
The first step in addressing the food waste issue is to raise public awareness on the size and scope of the issue, he said.
“There has been growing interest in sustainability in general among consumers and a willingness to take action when it comes to environmental issues like reducing the usage of single waste plastic, for example, as we have seen from our own experience,” said Noujeim.
“Our goal as a socially responsible company is to increase the speed and reach of this awareness, but around food waste as well, and at a collective level, not just an individual one,” he added.
In order to identify the scope of food wastage in the country, Sodexo Middle East partnered with Leanpath, a US based food waste prevention company, on a food waste prevention programme called WasteWatch powered by Leanpath (WWxLP). The WWxLP uses AI algorithms to collate data on food waste, identifying the meal type (breakfast, lunch or dinner) where the most wastage occurs and the food category (meats, rice, vegetables etc.)
While consumers tend to think of food waste only in terms of what is left on their plates, there is an almost equal amount of food wasted at the backend of the operation during meal preparations, said Noujeim.
Rachid Noujeim, CEO Middle East, Sodexo International
In Q3 2019, a pilot version of the programme was launched at the backend of five Sodexo sites in the UAE and recorded 11,072.82 kilograms of total food wastage over six months.
Sodexo Middle East will officially launch the platform across 41 UAE sites in the healthcare, corporate, energy & resources and defence sectors in Q3 of 2021. The ultimate goal is for the platform to be fully functional in the 67 countries Sodexo International operates in by 2025, as part of the company’s ‘Better Tomorrow 2025’ initiative.
“We were meant to launch the platform last year but Covid derailed us,” said Noujeim.
Using the data gathered from WWxLP on a daily basis, Sodexo can identify which of their sites generates the most waste and “identify the learning that needs to be implemented,” said Noujeim.
“Sometimes it is an issue of more training. For example, if you bring a butcher that is unskilled, he will defenitly have higher waste than a skilled employee,” said Noujeim.
“It could also go back to the quality of the product and so then you talk to your supplier about it,” he added.
At a later stage, Sodexo plans to take the WWxLP data to its customers in an effort to reduce food waste at the front-end through perhaps offering less choices at a buffet or limiting the amount served at one time.
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